


What the Butler Saw

by HarveyWallbanger



Series: A Letter In Your Writing Doesn't Mean You're Not Dead [8]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Bloodplay, Consent Issues, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Masturbation, Mindfuck, Multi, Other, Rough Sex, Stalking, Vampirism, Voyeurism, generally disturbing, meditation on loss and time disguised as a simple story about Spike being a creep, naughty bad magic, vampires are jerks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-02-22 05:43:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2496617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There is no there there."</p>
            </blockquote>





	What the Butler Saw

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a nice story. There's potentially something here to upset just about everybody, so please take care. The quotation used as the summary is by Gertrude Stein. I am not involved in the production of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and this school is not involved in the production of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. No one pays me to do this. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

If they asked him, he'd say. Everything, if he were paid, but even for free, he'd tell them something. A whisper in the right ear, and the impostor's fate is sealed. But no one asks. He comforts himself with the bare existence of his knowledge. It's the only thing worth anything, after all. So, he'll hold it against himself until the time comes to use it. Like a gun, or like a cock. He smiles to himself. He finds a pen in the pocket of his coat, and writes that down on his hand.

The funny business begins late in May.  
The lowest of the low. This place is wretched enough at any time of year, but in summer, it's deadly. The days are a long smear of honey, sticky and golden. Spike peeks through the cracks in the walls of the crypt he's been staying in, and sees the whole bloody pastoral nightmare of it. The sun is like a newly-minted sovereign, giving life and hope to a landscape eternal and splendid. Even the tombstones are dressed in gold. It makes him sullen. When he and Dru first arrived, and for a few months afterward, into autumn, it was nearly this hot. They'd spend the days in bed, she in her nightgown and he in his small clothes, dozing and watching telly. The heat was so great that made her parchment skin a bit clammy, like the petals of a dying flower. Such fun to hold a cold beer and let the drops of condensation fall onto her gown. Starting at her belly, and working upward, until one perfect drop fell onto a nipple, and she squealed and laughed and covered her face with her hands and told him that he was a vile creature. And then covered him with kisses that the heat made nearly so warm as those of a living girl.  
He's all alone, though, with nothing to do but watch his stories and wait for the night. Though, he can never wait for the full bloom of night. He always cheats, so he's dashing from wash of shadow to wash of shadow in the tea-colored dusk. Jumping like a great dunce on his way to some stupid fucking adventure. Which usually amounts to hanging around the few bars that haven't yet banned him until he can feel dawn coming. In his bones like the pain of an age he'll never know.  
Tonight, though, he can't countenance it. Let him wind up drinking beer under a bridge with the woman who'll drink with him, but points a pair of scissors at him if he looks at her. Let him wind up scaring teenagers for their pocket money and stolen fags. Let him wind up at an all-night diner, paying for a slice of sticky-sweet apple pie with handfuls of change. But save him from the same old shit.  
And save him from this. From the lowest of the low. Skulking about outside of Giles' house. Even skulking about outside of Buffy's house is slightly more dignified- and who knows, Joyce could take pity on him and offer him a cool drink. That's a trick he can't get away with too often, though, and the Slayer's been strange of late. Spiky and tightly-wound in a way he'd like to suggest is sexual tension, but he knows that she's been getting it from that mass of grass-fed beef she calls a boyfriend, so it can't be that. Unless Superman isn't quite so super, where it counts. Spike smiles. His private spitefulness brings back a little bit of his pride. Why shouldn't he be spying on Giles? His home is, after all, the beating heart of Slayer activity, and-  
What's this? Giles is going out. Spike watches him walk out of his door, cross the courtyard, and start out toward the street. Where could he be going? If there were something happening, Spike would know. He should follow. Without thinking, though, Spike stops, and it takes him a moment to figure out why. He hears the creamy rumble of a new motor, and then smells it on the air. That smell that Giles has, something like an old house. Spike turns toward the sound and the scent, and in a moment, Giles walks up the path from the parking lot toward his house. He watches Giles approach his house, struggling with bags of shopping and a stack of books, enter the house and close the door behind himself.  
Spike furrows his brow. He regards the sky with its stars blinking on. “Huh.”

It goes on like this for weeks. Giles leaves, and in less than the time it would take to walk around the building, Giles returns. In different clothes, every time. It happens on days when Giles- but which one?- comes home late. When does Giles- the other one?- what? Break in? Let himself in? Could it be a spell? An elaborate illusion concocted by Giles and the two witches to fiddle with Spike's ancient and alcohol-soaked brain? Spike shrugs, and soaks his brain with more alcohol. He tosses the empty bottle out into the night, listens to it smash someplace far away, a cheery clamor that gives him a pleasantly settled feeling.  
There's been no visitor this day. Spike set out early, wrapped in his blanket, muttering to himself if anyone got close enough to investigate. He watched Giles come home just as the sun was setting, to an empty home. But, ah- who's this? Spike drops his cigarette and moves a bit closer.  
Oh. It's the postman. He deposits something on Giles' doorstep and shuffles off without ringing the bell or knocking. Spike shakes his head, and walks up to the threshold. What the postman left is a box wrapped in paper, and oh, there's something else- a small bouquet, wrapped, but without a card. The postman obviously didn't leave this; the strength of the fragrance coming off of it suggests that it was left much earlier, and has been cooking in the sun all day. Giles, of course, didn't notice it as he walked in. Spike rings the bell, and the door is opened by a frowning Giles. Spike begins to walk into the house, but bounces back out.  
“What the-” Spike puts his hand against the invisible barrier to Giles' home.  
“I'm going to need assurances from you before I invite you in again.”  
“'Assurances'? What are you talking about- and are you drunk?” Though, Spike doesn't need to sniff the air to know that Giles hasn't yet had a drink from the bottle he just opened.  
“I am talking about you stealing my clothes,” Giles shakes his head, “for reasons that I, frankly, neither want nor need to know about. And my gin. And my library books.”  
“Okay. One-” Spike holds up a finger, “I wouldn't be caught dead in your clothes. Pardon the expression. Two-” another finger, “I don't drink gin, because I'm not a bloody housewife. Three-” another finger, “Why in hell would I want your library books?”  
“For evil purposes I don't pretend to understand.”  
Spike raises an eyebrow. “'Evil purposes'?”  
“Would you stop quoting me in that tone,” Giles huffs, “Yes, evil purposes. For the purpose of making me think that I'm losing my mind.”  
“Nice idea, but it requires too much commitment.”  
Giles looks down. “Yes.”  
Spike continues, letting his voice soften, though Christ knows why he bothers to try to be kind: “The whole mind-fuck thing was never for me. You're thinking of Angel, there, mate. And if he'd gone off the wagon again, we'd know about it, yeah?”  
“I suppose.”  
Spike rolls his eyes. He's ready to say something, but he decides against it. The scent of alcohol coming from inside of the house is making him irritable from want. “So, would you just let me in, already?”  
“You could just be trying to convince me that it's not you in order to better exploit your strategic advantage.”  
Spike rolls his eyes again, but says, still softly, placatingly, “Does that sound like me?”  
“No. Not really. Fine. Spike, you may come in.”  
Spike mutters, “And thank fuck for that.”  
“But you can't smoke in here.”  
“What else is new? Oh, and I shouldn't give you this, but I will, anyway.” Spike gives him the box and the bouquet. “You're very welcome,” Spike says, and plonks down in couch.  
Giles is puzzling over his presents, and Spike is about to sneak a quick tipple while he's distracted, when Xander walks in through the still-open door, with Anya. Sighing to himself, Spike sits down again.  
“Is that a bouquet of linden?” she asks.  
That's one he hasn't heard for a while. Not that he ever knew anyone daring enough to try it. He lets out a chuckle.  
“I don't know,” Giles says, caught off-guard, “Is it?” he turns to Spike, “Why is that funny?”  
Spike clears his throat. He's come over all bashful. You can take the boy out of the Victorian, but you can't take the Victorian out of the boy. “Just, y'know, an unconventional take on flowers and chocolate.”  
Giles takes off his glasses. “Why's that?”  
Thankfully, he doesn't have to attempt to extract the Victorian from himself just yet, because Anya says, too loudly, “Linden means 'fucking'. In the Victorian language of flowers.”  
“She said it; not me. And, actually, it's 'fornication'. Specific kind of fucking.”  
“Oh, yes,” Anya continues, “Fucking someone you're not married to.”  
“That's the one,” says Spike.  
“Are you fucking anyone you're not married to?” Anya gets out before Xander says, “Okay. That's enough of the Victorian language of flowers.”  
If he can't get a drink, he'll settle for chocolates. “Are you going to eat those, then?” To his surprise, Giles pitches them at his chest. He ought to be offended, but they turn out to be very good chocolates.

The visitor has been there since noon. Just before dawn, Spike stole a car, drove it over to Giles' house, and has been lying under a blanket in the backseat, observing the house with a contraption of his own making that combines binoculars and a periscope made of cardboard tubes. He's very proud of it. What the man could being doing inside of the house, Spike doesn't know. He can only see so much. For all he knows, it's actually Giles, the real one.  
It must be, Spike begins to think, as the day's gold fades to bronze and then to silver. At dusk, he collects his things, and moves closer to the house. There, he watches until the lights go on upstairs. The summer solstice has come and gone, and the nights are getting a bit longer, but unless this stranger knows something Spike doesn't know- or is, indeed, Giles- he's cutting it very close. For a moment, Spike stays where he is, waiting for something to happen, but nothing does. He sighs, then goes up to the great tree next to Giles' house, looks around for the neighbors that he already knows disappeared with the sun- and climbs.  
The curtains are drawn, but they aren't very substantial. The effect is that of looking at a sepia-toned film projection of Giles. Undressing. He's already taken off his glasses and his shirt, and he's starting on the rest. As Spike watches. If he had breath, he might hold it. But dead or alive, some inconveniences are eternal. Spike smiles to himself. A stiff with a stiffy. He'll have to remember that one. In the time he's existed, Spike has certainly seen more interesting things than a naked middle-aged man, but, he imagines, he's experiencing the thrill of the forbidden. And certainly, he's thought about it, but imagining isn't seeing. Watching Giles slip into bed, then get out again to pluck a handkerchief from his pocket, pull the sheets up over himself, and begin moving in an unmistakable way. If Spike's blood circulated, he might blush.  
It doesn't take more than five minutes, and Spike doesn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved. Giles goes off with a cry that Spike can hear through the window, arching and bucking like he knows he has an audience. How is Spike going to be able to look at him forever after, and not see this? He'll watch Giles getting professorial with Buffy, but only see him like this, flushed and trembling, painted with his own sweat, fucking himself like there's no tomorrow. Spike closes his eyes; it's already all he can see. Spike breathes in deeply. He hasn't come, he's still hard, but he needs a cigarette.  
Then, something odd happens. Giles rises, goes to the bathroom for a moment, returns, and dresses. He shakes out the sheets, re-makes the bed, turns off the light, and leaves the room. Spike's still up the tree when he hears the front door open and then close, again. He's about to climb down, when he hears the door open again. He stills, and waits for what he somehow knows will come next. Giles walks into the bedroom. A different Giles, rumpled and defeated. Who undresses wearily, and goes into the bathroom. While he's there, Spike gets out of the tree, crosses the street and lights a cigarette, looking up at the light from Giles' bedroom.  
He smokes another two, waiting for. What? He looks for another in the pack, but it's empty. He crumples it up, and throws it to the ground. A few minutes later, Giles' door opens, and Giles runs out, a coat over his pajamas, gets into his car and drives away. Spike goes to the door, shuts it, and then sets off to find a place where he can buy cigarettes at this time of night.

For a week, no one comes to or goes from the house, not even the stranger. What could it mean? Where is Giles? Could it all have been a dream? Perhaps there never was a Rupert Giles, at all. Perhaps, Spike will wake up back in London, next to Dru, Angelus and Darla fucking or killing each other in the next room. Perhaps he contracted prophecy from Dru, and this is the first of many dreams of a terrible and ridiculous future. He pinches himself, and walks off into the night  
to Buffy's house. There's no light on in her window, and looking into the others tells him that she isn't home. Perhaps she was a dream, too. He stands in the front garden for a while, shuffling his feet, trying to think of someplace else to go, when the door opens. Oh. It's the little bit.  
“Buffy's not here,” she says.  
“Well, I know that.”  
“So, what're you doing?”  
“Had to come all this way to see that she wasn't here, didn't I?”  
From inside of the house, Joyce calls, “Dawn, who are you talking to out there?”  
“It's just Spike.”  
Joyce appears, softly luminous in her dressing gown. “Spike.” She smiles. “Buffy's not here.”  
“Yeah, er,” he looks down, “Dawn told me.”  
“Would you like to come in?” she holds out a hand.  
“No. Er. No. I actually have to be going. I came by to give Buffy a message, but it's not important, so I guess I'll tell her the next time I see her.”  
“Okay. Well, stop by any time.”  
“Thank you.”  
“Have a good night, Spike.”  
“You, too,” he raises a finger, “Lock up tight, now.”  
Joyce smiles. “I will. You be careful out there, too.”  
She closes the door. He can't stand there any longer, so he takes himself away, further into the night.

Someone's dead. He knows it before he crosses the street. It changes the air. In front of Giles' house, paramedics are strapping a body onto a stretcher, and Spike knows without coming closer that it's Giles'. As though conjured, Xander and Anya appear, and- what?  
Giles comes out of the house to greet them.  
But who?  
He can't come closer without being seen, and somehow, he knows that he shouldn't be seen. So, he stays where he is, and he waits, and then he takes a leisurely walk across town.  
The Sunnydale morgue is absurd. Anyone can get in, and more than a few have found it easy to get out. Maybe it's just common sense not to employ security guards; they'd hardly be a deterrent to the malefactors they'd encounter. A picked lock, and Spike's in the room where they store the newly-admitted cadavers. None of the drawers are labeled, so Spike has to go through them all. Looking for what or for whom, he doesn't know. Rupert Giles is at home, but he isn't. He looked like Giles, he moved like him, sounded like him, but it wasn't him. None of the corpses Spike looks at yield any helpful information.  
He sighs. He puts everything back as he found it, and goes out to the front desk.  
“Hi, how're ya doing?” he says to the woman behind the desk, cringing at his fake American accent, “I'm Detective Summers,” he flashes the credentials that he took off a copper back in better times.  
The woman smiles. “Good evening, Detective. What can I do for you?”  
“I'm here following up on a suspicious death. The, er, decedent was taken from, er-” fuck, why did he never learn Giles' address- “the domicile of a Rupert Giles. G-I-L-E-S.”  
“Oh,” she frowns, “I didn't know that the police were treating that as suspicious.”  
He shrugs.  
“Well, as far as I know, an autopsy wasn't ordered, so I can only give you a preliminary report. We still have the deceased's personal effects, if you want those.”  
“Yeah. Please.”  
“Okay. Just a sec.”  
She leaves him, and he takes a breath. She returns with a file and a bag, which she gives to him without any objection.  
“Okay. Well, thanks a lot,” he says.  
“You have a good evening, Detective.”  
“You, too.”  
The curiosity is eating him from the inside out, but he doesn't want to risk being discovered, so he waits until he's on yet another side of town, at a coffee shop, before he looks at what he was given. The report is brief, stating the fact of the demise of someone called Ethan Rayne- that's a name Spike knows- as recorded by the paramedics called to the home of Rupert Giles, by Giles, himself. The cause of death was a heart attack, not out of order for someone of Rayne's age, that being approximately fifty. Identification was made by Rupert Giles, old friend, et cetera, et cetera, blah blah fishcakes. Spike frowns. He opens the bag. It contains the clothing Rayne was wearing, which looks eerily similar to clothing that he's seen Giles wearing. That's it. He touches the clothes, sniffs them. They contain the scent of cologne, of cigarette smoke, but also of some other sort of combustion.  
“What in hell does this mean?” he asks, and rests his head in his hands.  
“Here's your pie, honey,” rasps the waitress.  
“Oh,” he says, and pushes aside the file, the bag, and the clothes, “Ta very much.”  
She puts down his pie. “So, you're English, huh?”  
“Accent's a give-away.”  
“Well, yeah. Just, you're the second one I've seen this week. Englishman, I mean.”  
“Oh, how's that?”  
“This guy came in earlier this week. English, like you.”  
“What did he look like?”  
She sighs, regards the ceiling. “Middle-aged, maybe forty- but good-looking. Nice face, kind eyes. Brown hair.”  
“Glasses?”  
“No, not that I saw.”  
“What did he order?”  
“Cup of tea, toast.”  
“You only saw him the once?”  
“No, I saw him a few times.”  
“Did he say anything about why he was in town?”  
“Business, he said. Do you know this guy, or something?”  
“Possibly.”  
“Okay, then. Need anything else?”  
“No. Thank you. Myrtle. Lovely name.”  
“Thanks. That's what your friend said, too. He said that he was taking it as, oh, what did he say? 'An august tiding'. Apparently, it means both marriage and discipline. Wish someone had told that to my ex-husbands,” she hoots, and walks away, laughing gaily at her own joke.  
Spike pays in change, but leaves her a ten dollar bill as a tip.

A little discipline is what he needs, and he finds it, and he uses it to watch Giles' house all day, starting at dawn, from up a tree or under a parked car- one time from inside of an empty bin. While it's still dark, he sets out, with a lunch pail containing a thermos of blood and one of booze, and hides himself before the neighborhood begins to stir. It's hell not being able to have a fag, but he'll endure.  
Since the death of Ethan Rayne- or, Spike is now sure, the death of Rupert Giles- there have been regular visits from Willow's girlfriend. What's this about? An overheard call made on her mobile to Willow reveals that Willow, herself, has been absent. The girlfriend dutifully reports Giles' perceived emotional state, and offers bounteous reassurances that Willow is not a bad person for staying away, that it's awkward for all of them, and does Willow feel like Japanese food that night? Willow does.  
Listening at the kitchen window of the Summers house one evening, he learns the nature of the awkwardness Willow's girlfriend mentioned. It's all he can do to not burst out laughing, lying on his back behind a shrubbery, to hear Buffy blurt out that Anya believes that Giles and the late Ethan Rayne were fucking. She's on the phone with Willow, and the silence that follows is spectacular. Finally, Buffy says, quietly, “Yeah, you're right. I guess it would explain kind of a lot.”

He thinks that he knows everything, now. He knows enough, anyway. But what's he going to do with that knowledge? What he thought was so valuable doesn't seem to interest anyone at all. Buffy and her friends are delighted by their own obliviousness. Of course, he could just tell them, without them begging him for enlightenment, but that's no fun. So, he goes to the person that he knows already knows what he knows.  
“Heard about the old flame. Does this make you a widow?”  
Ethan Rayne regards him with all of Giles' coolness, but none of his contempt. “Spike.” The intonation is all wrong, too. But then, Rayne never saw him and Giles interact.  
Spike raises his eyebrows, and exhales cigarette smoke through his nose. “That's my name- don't wear it out.”  
“How did you find out?”  
“A fellow hears things.”  
“By listening at keyholes, I suppose.”  
“Windows, actually. And I pick things up on the air.” Now that he's close enough, he knows. It's that scent. It's not quite sulfur. Is this what magic smells like? It's certainly not what Giles smelled like. Similar, but not quite.  
“Ah.”  
“You can count on my discretion, though. Shan't breathe a word to anyone.”  
“Very reassuring. And what, exactly, would you tell them?” Rayne looks out into the distance, showing Spike his profile.  
“This and that.”  
Rayne reaches up, as though for glasses that aren't there. “Relics of by-gone eras though we both may be, I think you'll find that the rest of the world has dragged itself into the twenty-first century. I can't imagine that you'd shock anyone with the revelation that once, long ago, I cultivated some unusual relationships.”  
“That, and other things.”  
“I don't know what you think you know-”  
“Plenty. There isn't much that gets by me. Not like it does, the others. But I'm not one to go telling tales. You'll see.”  
“I suppose you want money.”  
Ooh- he hadn't actually considered blackmail. Somehow, that doesn't seem like as much fun.  
Spike shakes his head. “No, mate. The satisfaction of having something on you that no one else does is quite enough for me.”  
“That's touching.”  
“Call it what you like. All of your little secrets are safe with me, Rupert.”  
Rayne sneers. “Cross your heart and hope to die?”  
Spike smiles back, beatifically. “Exactly. I won't tell a soul.”  
“Why don't you tell me. What do you know?”  
“How much do I know, you mean?”  
“Call it what you like.”

The facts are these. For weeks, someone was scaring the shit out of Rupert Giles. That person, as far as Spike was able to observe, was Rupert Giles, himself. Though, it's now obvious that that person was, in fact, Ethan Rayne, who had made himself look like Giles through some enchantment. Ethan Rayne having been sent down by Rupert Giles, after the unpleasantness earlier that year. Spike leers. And, possibly, some unpleasantness of a more personal nature, at some point in the past. His leer becomes a triumphant grin.

“So, it's all just a simple case of revenge.”  
“What a charming summation,” Rayne sighs, “If you're going to smoke on my property, you can offer me a cigarette.”  
“I didn't know you smoked.”  
“Surely, you've smelled it on me.”  
“Yeah, but that-” Spike smiles, lips closed around his cigarette, and holds up one finger in front of his mouth. That was Giles. Who hid it from Buffy and her friends, but he couldn't hide it from Spike.  
“Yes. Quite.” He takes the cigarette that Spike offers. “Thank you.”  
“Better manners, anyway.”  
“It costs nothing to be polite.”  
“Speaking of cost...”  
“I thought you said you didn't want anything.”  
“I said I didn't want money.” Spike lights a new cigarette with the end of the old one, drops the end and grinds it into the pavement with his heel. He shrugs, pulling his coat around himself. “I'm feeling moody. Weird kind of night.”  
Rayne looks off into the distance again. “I suppose.”  
“You'd know, wouldn't you? If there were something on the air.”  
He shrugs. “What do you want?”  
“Tell me something.”  
“What's that?”  
“Tell me a story.”  
Rayne laughs, hard and nasty. “I'll tell you a story,” he clears his throat, “Did you know that Ripper had a band?”  
“No,” Spike laughs, “Why do you call him 'Ripper', though?”  
The corners of Rayne's mouth turn up for a second. But one wouldn't really call it a smile. “That's a different story. Yes, he had a band, for about six months, when he was slumming in London, evading his destiny. They were called The White Stains. Then, just The Stains, when Deirdre refused to play with them under that name. It was Ripper, Deirdre, may she forgive me for telling you about this, and a friend of hers. They had no drummer. Which is probably why they only had one gig, and dissolved out of sheer self-disgust. But Rupert, when he was playing, was beautiful. I'm not shocking you, am I?”  
“Take a bit more than the love that dare not speak its name to give me pause.”  
“Good. People can be absurd about these things. Even vampire people.”  
Spike shrugs. “I've had my share of the company of men. Of course, a lot of them weren't exactly willing-”  
Rayne holds up a hand. “Please, spare me the details.”  
“Right. Don't want to sully your reminiscences.”  
“Thank you for understanding. Rupert was lovely, then. Lovely to look at, of course, but lovely to be with. Trying so hard to be terrible, and failing. Failing utterly. He was so afraid. Angry, but only because he was afraid.”  
“Of fucking a bloke?”  
Rayne shakes his head. “Of being himself. If he'd only wanted women, he would have had the same problems, if she'd been an outsider. It might have been a bit easier, but the second he had to explain her, to his family, or them to her, he would have fallen apart.”  
“Ah.”  
“Do you understand what I mean?”  
“I'm over a hundred years old. There isn't much I don't understand. So, you killed him.”  
“He's quite alive, in a certain sense.”  
“What, because you still love him?”  
“No, I mean because his spirit is trapped in his house. He's still in there. I'm keeping him there.”  
Spike doesn't say anything.  
Rayne puts out his cigarette. “I'm going in now, but do drop by again if you'd like. Good night.”  
Spike watches him go, and then regards the house. He stands there for some time, staring at the house, thinking about Giles as a part of it. He puts his hand over his mouth. “Fuck.” He turns around and walks back to his crypt. By the time he gets back, it'll be time for The Drew Carey Show.

“It'll take a while to warm me up, but after that, I think you'll find that I'm capable of a sustained effort.”  
Spike smiles. “We'll take it slowly, shall we?”  
Ethan replies, “I have nothing but time.”  
Dru's been here. Well, not here, exactly, but close enough. Spike kisses Ethan, who looks like Giles, who was once kissed by Drusilla, whom he'd been mesmerized into believing was someone else, altogether. Bites Ethan's lips, feels him shake, more than a tremble, almost a shiver. Holds him close, and holds him in and holds him down. Ethan's taking off his clothes, showing him the body of Rupert Giles, which, of course, he's already seen.  
“I saw you,” Spike says. His voice sounds strange to him, too low, worn out.  
“Saw me when, darling?” Ethan asks, tipping back his head, laughter in his voice.  
“I saw you in Giles' bed.”  
“Was this, perhaps, a prophetic vision?” Ethan kisses him so hard it knocks out his breath. Or, would, if he had any. Pulls his hair, tugs at his shirt.  
“I saw you,” Spike says, grabbing onto his wrists, “having a wank in Giles' bed.” He tightens his grip, but almost has to let go when the pain comes. He winces. Tightens his grip again. Grits his teeth.  
“And what did you think of that?”  
“I thought,” he yanks Ethan closer, “that you were-” he hesitates. He swallows. He speaks: “I thought that you were him.”  
“Ah.” Ethan's mouth is against his ear. “What did you think about that?” His voice is infuriatingly soft. Is he being pitied? Is he being laughed at? Almost certainly. If the chip weren't there-  
If the chip weren't there, he'd tear Ethan to shreds with a smile on his face. Though, Ethan would probably have a smile on his face, too.  
He's easing Ethan back, down onto Giles' bed, Ethan undoing his trousers. Ethan asks, “Would you like me to pretend that I'm him?” Ethan pulls them down, kicks off his shoes, wriggles out of them, and his pants.  
“I thought it more likely that you'd want me to pretend to be him.”  
Ethan half smiles. “It's a nice thought, but there's no resemblance, at all.” He leans on his elbows, gives a little wiggle. “But I think you'd like it if I were him, for a while. How did you imagine it?”  
Spike runs his tongue over one of his canine teeth, blunt and smooth. “He wouldn't like it.”  
Ethan laughs, a rich sound that could never have come out of Rupert Giles. “No, I don't imagine he would.”  
“No,” Spike looks around, “I mean, he wouldn't like it, now. He's still here, you said. He's haunting you.”  
“Well, he should thank me for making his afterlife a little bit more interesting.”  
“All right.”  
He's on top of Ethan- Giles- now. Right where Drusilla was, and he didn't have to look at Angelus to know that he wore the same ridiculous aghast expression as Spike. This was something they'd never considered, and it was terrible, but it was wonderful. But that was Drusilla. She didn't care about anything, and the not-caring made her so brave, and she was free, and she could do anything. She'd seen the future; how could anything be beyond her? Thinking of her makes him feel soft, and he can't help it, it's terrible, but he misses her, and hates her, and he's kissing Ethan the way he watched her kiss Giles. The blood is singing in Ethan's veins, and Spike bites his lips again, draws blood, sucks it away. It only hurts a little bit, but he hears himself let out a small, wounded sound. He bites Ethan's throat, and does it again. Harder, so that Ethan echoes him.  
“Do you miss him?” Spike asks.  
“Miss who?” Ethan asks, actually managing to sound like Giles. Just a minor change to the pitch of his voice does it. Changes the entire world with it.  
Spike smiles. “Ethan.”  
“Yes.”  
“Show me what you'd do if he were here.”  
Ethan smiles, and Spike lets himself be rolled onto his back. Still smiling, Ethan strikes him. The pain is less than the pain that the chip sends, but the quality is different, and it shocks him.  
“Fucking hell,” Spike yelps, and touches his face.  
“You said that I should show you.”  
It even surprises him when he laughs. Ethan starts a bit, and Spike hears the hitch in his heartbeat. Still laughing, he grabs Ethan again by the wrists- Giles' wrists- shakes him a little. The chip gives him a kick, effervescent and golden as champagne, and he laughs again, crushes together the bones in Ethan's wrists. Now, the pain is rich, syrupy, and he moans, lets go of Ethan and undoes his trousers.  
“I suppose I'm not the only one who likes a little pain,” Ethan murmurs, touching his wrists.  
“Shut up,” Spike says, pulls his shirt over his head, “I've had enough of this. Just shut up.” He pushes Ethan back- but gently!- pushes against him, pulls his trousers down. Now, it's just a matter of achieving the right friction. He doesn't care about anything else anymore.  
But Ethan's kissing him; as he does, grabbing him, moving him, digging Rupert Giles' fingers into his hips, legs wrapped around him. How did this happen? Dru was never here. He's kissing Ethan back, and it's not like what he remembers, from watching Dru. But this isn't Rupert Giles. And he's not Drusilla.  
Ethan's touching him, now, fingers reaching down between them, brushing his hipbone, his thigh, his cock. Sighing, Spike rolls onto his back, lets Ethan straddle him, grasp him in earnest, pull him off, finally, finally. Finally, give him his release, and it's better than he would have thought. It's a revelation, and he doesn't even pretend that it's Ethan's name that he exhales in a breath he wasn't holding.  
He breathes. He breathes out, lays his hand on his belly, breathes in again.  
“Come here,” he says, puts his hands on Ethan's hips and motions him forward. “All right,” Spike murmurs, more to himself than to Ethan, “Not so fast. Let a fellow ease into it.”  
Ethan smiles his puzzling smile, and moves in slowly. Spike puts his hands on his ass and guides him, forward, slowly, in. Slowly. It's easy. To let Ethan push in and pull out, first unevenly, then smoothly, when he's almost there, fucking Spike's mouth. It costs Spike nothing. He has no breath, he has no blood. Ethan is breathing out breaths that sound like words, and Spike waits to hear the inevitable combination of sounds- but, no. No. It's his own name that he hears. And oh- that makes him start, move with Ethan as his hips jerk once more, and he relaxes. Goes velvet-soft, and pulls his cock away from Spike's mouth.  
Says in his soft, soft voice: “Was it everything you'd hoped for?”  
Spike replies, softly, so softly, “Wasn't enough blood.”  
Ethan shrugs. “Well, nothing is ever precisely what one wants.”  
Can Spike argue with that? He cannot.

Morning must come. Just as it must every day. So he goes back to his crypt, and he puts out a glass of water, and he takes off his boots, and then he takes off his coat. He lays his coat over himself, and he goes to sleep.  
And he dreams. Strange dreams. More vivid than he's ever had. In the dreams, he wonders if he's come over prophetic, if he's like Dru, now. He wonders if he can see the future. He can, he thinks. He sees himself, over a period of months, doing things- things he cannot imagine. What is he seeing? Is this what Dru saw? Several different futures at once, and her, in the middle of all of these conflicting endings? Was this what drove her mad?  
No. It was not. Dru never cared about the future. She lived in the moment. In his dream, he smiles. To think of his gorgeous, his lovely girl. In his dream, he aches with missing her. For a moment, he waits, and without knowing why, he holds his hand over his left breast.  
He misses her. He doesn't know why. Isn't she here, beside him? And in the next room, are not Darla and Angelus? Is he not aware of them, always, as he's aware of all of the blood vessels in a human body? If Dru is his heart, then are not Angelus and Darla his jugular and femural, respectively? Do not all rivers flow into the sea? No matter how far removed from him, by sentiment or by time, Darla might be, does not sense her? If she may be the foundation, does she not support him upon the ground?  
What the hell was he trying to say? It's draining away from him.  
And he's been here before. He knows this place. It's a bar. In London. Thick with smoke, and the smell of anise. And he walked down its length, beholding pretty things in silk and leather, in lace and satin, waiting to see what most appealed to him. Until someone approached him. Whose face Spike cannot see in the dream, but he somehow knows is an older gent. Spike smells it before he sees it. Power. If you want to call it that. What humans, in their temporary envelopes of meat, think of as power. Spike smiles, flexes his fingers, lights a fag.  
But what happens next?  
He wakes up next to Dru. He picks up her wrist, mouths it gently, licks the prominent veins that he knows don't pulse.  
She rolls over. “Oh, baby,” she croons, “Didn't you find anyone?”  
He blinks. “No.”  
“Oh!” she gasps, “Oh! My poor darling. Drink from these deep, dark waters.” She severs a vein with a fingernail, and blood like treacle comes forth. He looks into her eyes and sees love; he closes his eyes, drinks deep of lifeless waters, and forgets. She murmurs, “Drink deeply of the Lethe, my poor Orpheus.” Spike forgets. He forgets.  
He wakes.  
“Dru?” But there is no response. He lets his hand rise to his breast. Aside from his boots, he's fully dressed. But his coat-  
His coat is across the chamber, draped over the chair he picked up from the tip. Of course he's not wearing it; it's too bloody hot. Was it this hot when he laid down that morning? No. He remembers a slight chill, as on a spring morning, back in London-  
He dreamt. He was in London. With Dru. He went out- he dreamt that he went out. But when he came home, his stomach was still empty. And she fed him, her own blood. It was overripe pears and dregs of fine port. Exhausted, he slept.  
Exhausted, he woke.  
He rises, goes to the door, opens it cautiously. Dusk is not yet complete; the sky is a glass of port only half full. The air clings to his bare arms. But surely, the air should have changed by now. It's October. Or November. He puts on his coat, and creeps outside, moves from long shadow to long shadow. There's someplace he's meant to go-  
Ah, yes. The Watcher's house. Though, he isn't properly a Watcher, anymore. Giles' house. Something's going to happen there. Someone's coming.  
There was something about Giles, Spike muses as he walks. Something wasn't right about him. Something was strange in his house. There was something about the house- but something about the man, himself- and suddenly, Spike has the impression of Giles and the house being one object. Giles was the house- That can't be right. Who, then, was Giles?  
He's at the house, now. It's just a house. Its lights are off, the door is closed. Feeling foolish, Spike taps at the door. There is no answer. Somehow, he knew that there wouldn't be. He turns his back to the door, leans against it. He knew that there was a reason for him to be here. He knew. He picks up the newspaper on the threshold. July 30th.  
He forgot. 

“Was it really the right thing to do?”  
Willow pushes aside her hair and kisses Tara's forehead, her cheek. “Giles is alive, now. Of course it was the right thing to do.”  
“I just can't help but wonder,” Tara continues, “I don't feel right, knowing things that other people don't know. And will it have any lasting effects- taking away peoples' memories? It seems like it would... hurt, somehow.”  
Willow frowns. “How could it hurt, if there's nothing there?”  
“I think it could. It would be the pain of something taken away.”  
“Like grief.”  
Tara shakes her head. “Grief fades, it becomes part of you. This would just be absence.” She shivers and pulls Willow close to her. “We took something from people.” But what was it, exactly? “Was it time?” Tara whispers.  
“You can't take away time. Even if you change it, it doesn't go anywhere. It's like energy.”  
“But we haven't gotten there, yet. We won't know what changed until it happens. Or it doesn't happen. How much did we take? We could have taken more than we meant to...”  
A twitch of Willow's shoulders. “Everything we do changes the world. You can't just stop doing things because you're afraid of the consequences.”  
“I suppose you're right...”

But imagine, Willow, the places where that philosophy might take you. You can't, because they are unimaginable. To you, who are young and full of love. But wait until she can stand it no longer, these things you believe and the things that you'll do, and takes her love away, draining the love from you, like water from a bathtub. And you find yourself alone, save whatever companion you can scrape up for the night. And when they tire you more than they amuse you, just alone, then.  
And imagine, Tara, coming home one mauve velvet evening in some unimaginable future, and finding on the threshold of your dwelling- where you live alone, as you have for the better part of three decades- a bouquet of violets and a fine envelope containing a strand of red hair and a small card printed, in writing you once knew as well as your own, with the quotation “There is no there there”.


End file.
